We don’t have to choose a single truth. In fact, in most areas of life, we have multiple realities that don’t exactly add up. They simply coexist, and the best we can do is acknowledge all of them.

This is a scary circuit to build, because it leads to teens and adults who don’t trust themselves and cannot locate intuition. Instead, they use other people’s treatment of them to define who they are and what they deserve.

Understanding that we’re all good inside is what allows you to distinguish a person (your child) from a behavior (rudeness, hitting, saying, “I hate you”). Differentiating who someone is from what they do is key to creating interventions that preserve your relationship while also leading to impactful change.

When we receive validation from others, we start to regulate our own experience because we “borrow” someone’s communication of realness; when we receive invalidation, we almost always get further dysregulated and escalated, because now we have the experience of being told we are not real inside. Very few things feel as awful as this.

What’s the opposite of understanding? For this argument’s sake, it’s convincing. Convincing is the attempt to prove a singular reality—to prove that “only one thing is true.” Convincing is an attempt to be “right” and, as a result, make the other person “wrong.” It rests on the assumption that there is only one correct viewpoint. When we seek to

A child’s job in a family system is to explore and learn, through experiencing and expressing their emotions and wants. Kids need to learn what they are capable of, what is safe, what their role in the family is, how much autonomy they have, and what happens when they try new things.

focusing on a child’s impact on us sets the stage for codependence, not regulation or empathy.)

There’s nothing as scary to a child as noticing when their parent fails at this job (especially when that failure stems from a parent’s fear of their kid’s reaction). The child receives the subconscious message: when you are out of control, there’s no one capable of stepping in and helping you. Of course, your kid won’t thank you for stepping in

When things feel tough, I remind myself of this ultimate “two things are true” statement: I am a good parent having a hard time.